7/28/11

I'm here again, after this time without posts, for share my first 2011's demo reel. It contains a sample of all work I made on 2010 in the Trunk Train Project, Capitain Constantino, and Monica's Gang, that for the Mauricio de Souza Productions. For this time, only 2D animations was made. As soon as possible, I update with more animations, now in 3D. I hope you enjoy it.

4/29/11

That's the clip of the 3rd episode of the awsome serie Trunk Train!The serie is a success in the Brazilian Tv! If you are not a person with samba in your feet, call your producers and buy the serie for your country, man! What are you waiting for? :D

1/24/11

Now, I'm here to show you some studies that I've made with Chinese ink and brush, to “try” myself.

It's a work that I like a lot. On this paper (which is made with eggshell), I've tried to build a female figure through big and small black shapes, to show the shadow and the light in the woman. The composition in triangle is a way to maintain the sad and "non-active" atmosphere that the figure in the work is feeling.

This was a challenge, because the woman is under the sun light, and has few shadow areas to describe her body. Fortunately, the human-eye (and the brain) complete the figure suggested by some lines. It's magic.

In this work I've tried to make a figure with thick-and-thin lines, like the great master Eric Goldberg said in his amazing book: Character Animation Crash Course. Only one brush could give a thousand kinds of shapes, and these ones helped me to draw this woman. The different lines and shapes can express different materials, like skin, cloth or water, that we can observe in this work.

1/17/11

I'm here now, after all this time, to show you some sketches made with pen that I drew to try (and find) beautiful designs from characters. Following the Fisiognomony studies, I started from the animal faces to define their personality and the best shape for them. As you may know, the results above are part of a big process and thousand of drawings to attempt to do a good shape, and a consistent character. Angeli, actually, one of the best skilled cartoonist in the world, said once, that he draws hundreds of cartoons to find one which he really likes and send to his publisher.

First of all, I followed the Fisiognomony studies. That ancient knowledge tried to anticipate a personality of men and women through their similarities with animals. We can observe this in some Rubens' drawings, the "lion-man", or Bruegel's grotesque characters. You can find more information about this ancient way of knowledge in Jurgis Baltrušaitis and his great essay in the book Aberrações.

In the drawing (first step) I've tried to define the character's line action and the pose. At this step is not important to concern about the details or clothes of the character. We have to see the pose clearer than other things, and fix the character, no more in this step.

The next step is to define the character's final volume, and we can do it through a rough line, like that made in the step one. Here, we draw the body and some details loosely. Then we draw the lines which will be responsible to give the character its final volume, pose and details. At this moment, this work is similar to Clean Up Animator's job. In animation all the details don't need to be drawn on the same sheet. However, as this work is a character design, and I’m drawing on paper (not in a computer software) I can do it on the same sheet. Of course, when I’m working for hire, in a company, for clients, I have to be careful with some requirements. So, I used to draw in layers; all these steps that I mentioned, I'd draw on many layers, because it's easier to modify the character if the client wants some change in character’s appearance. Well, whatever you do, you can follow these steps, working in layers or not.

With the lines, I can connect them and "voila"!

The same process was made to this character: I drew the loose line to define his line action (and the silhouette too, it's important to mention), and I made the line to define the volume of the character. At this moment it's important to quote the great master, Professor Antônio Fialho, who worked at some DreamWorks' features, like Joseph, Spirit and Sinbad. His wisdom was taught to his classes about the character's clean up and animation (drawing, character design, etc) in the Fine Arts Scholl of Federal University of Minas Gerais, with his unique patience. He's the best teacher because his major lesson is "everything (in cinema) can be better; so, study about more solutions". It's THE lesson. If you love to draw, love to animate, you can make these things better than before. And to make it better, you need to study more, watch movies, read texts in books, blogs, and researching how other artists found solutions for some shape or narrative problems. As you may know, Brad Bird ( Iron Giant, The Incredibles, Ratatouille) says that he and his team make a film which people will want to see not only today, but also tomorrow.

After that, I connect the lines to "close" the character.

These are some more sketches. Some of them are cutie and I like so much. The elephant is one of them.

This I made after (re)watch the first movie of the great C.S. Lewis' Chronicles of Narnia.

She is a woman who works close to me, in the same street. Everyday, when she arrives, she sits down on the street bench, lights up her cigarette and drinks her coffee. Everyday. The same habit. It's so fascinating watch what the person does, in public places, isn’t it?

These are three sketch poses - not a thumbnails, because they are a little bigger than these ones. I wanted to develop a character, and, after the silhouette, I need to see how plastic he/she can be. So, make animated poses can be a good option for this. It's a sample of a classic take, made by Tex Every and his fellows in 40's and 50's.